I have two more in this section, and then, let's call
a halt for a few minutes.
This is rather a tourist poem.
It's called "Sailing to Jerusalem."
On coming up on deck Palm Sunday morning,
we saw the seas the dancing little tourist
ship climbed up and down all night in cabin dreams.
They came along in ridges a horizon wide!
and ran away astern to the Americas
we left, to break on headlands and be called "the surf."
After services below, the pilgrims to the east
carried their processed palm fronds
up on deck and some of them went overboard
from children's hands.
So, Christ-- there were the palm leaves
on the water as the first fruits of the ocean's promised land.
They promise pilgrims resurrection out at sea,
though sea-sick fasters in their rocking bunks
below cry out for a harbor, order, and stability.
But this is the place for it!
The sky is high with it, the water deep, the air its union--
spray!
We all walk the water just below the decks
too, helplessly dancing to the world's variety
like your Jerusalem, Byzantium, or Rome.